Top 8 Teams Most Likely to Win the World Cup Plus Odds for World Cup Quarter-Finals

All eight games in the Round of 16 have been completed, so we now know who the final 8 teams are in the World Cup who will be vying to win the 2014 tournament.

Chris McFarland of Share Draft has re-run the data simulations to determine who are the teams most likely to win the World Cup.

First, an update regarding how the odds are determined.

Using Elo ratings (ER), an elegant metric for calculating current strength based on weighted recent relative performance, each match’s expected outcome was plugged into a Poisson random number generator. Using weights derived from historical regression analysis and the knowledge that soccer goals per game follow a Poisson distribution, the generator churns out game outcomes. Structuring the matches into the World Cup’s schedule and storing the results for a half million simulations gives us the analysis below.